atrina Lankenau, 27, of Latham, NewYork, was always the big girl in school,her weight topped 220 lbs. in collegeon her 5’ 4” frame. She had a kind ofweight-loss epiphany trying on plus-size Halloween costumes. “It was justreally emotional for me,” she recalled. “The next day Ithrew out everything that was junk food or bad for me.

I bought a journal and I wrote down all of my food. Ibought books about clean eating.”As anyone who has tried to lose weight knows,determination and education are only the first steps. If theprocess of losing weight were as simple as the formula —more calories out than calories in — losing weight wouldbe easier for everyone. But ridding ourselves of poundsinvolves more than arithmetic. It involves changes in ourbehavior. One element of a weight-loss program that may behelpful is keeping a food diary.

There is evidence that the simple practice of recording
your food intake can have a dramatic effect on eating
behavior and weight. Every one of 15 studies on self-monitoring dietary intake that were included in an in-depth
review sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and
published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association
“found significant associations between self-monitoring and
weight loss.” This was certainly Catrina’s experience.

As she began acting on her determination to lose weight,
Catrina started keeping a food diary. She knew about
recording what she ate from watching weight-loss shows
and reading diet books. After losing 40 pounds on her own,
she hired a trainer who urged her to keep journaling about
her food. “I realized the days I wasn’t writing down what I
ate were the days that I wasn’t staying on plan,” she said.

In a report from one of the largest and longest running
weight-loss and maintenance trials ever conducted,
researchers at Kaiser Permanente’s Center for Health
Research and their colleagues throughout the country found
that people who regularly kept food diaries lost about twice
as much weight as those who didn’t. The more food records
participants kept, the more weight they lost.

Keeping a food diary can be as formal as maintaining anotebook or journal, but it doesn’t have to be. Catrina kepta paper diary for years, but now she uses an app on hersmartphone. (See Telediatetics and Weight Management.)

When Catrina first started using the diary, it was morelike a private journal where she would write about herfeelings. “As I got into it more and as it became more alifestyle of eating healthy, I did switch over to an app andultimately I used My Fitness Pal probably the most,” Catrinasaid. “When I was working at a job, sometimes I would planwhat I was going to eat the next day, write it all down andhave it packed and ready the night before. As I’ve gotten intoit more, it’s my lifestyle now, and I write it down at the endof the day as a way of checking on myself.”Catrina credits keeping diaries with changing herrelationship to food by making herself accountable. “Whenyou track everything, you can see if your weight stops